The invention concerns a waterless toilet for use with containers that accommodate the waste and can be sealed tight.
Waterless toilets are employed where the water lines and sewage pipes necessary for conventional toilets are not available. They are especially employed in intercity buses, on ships and boats, in aircraft, and for camping.
A waterless toilet of the aforesaid type is known from U.S. Pat. No. 3,772,712. The container is a rigid cardboard box or similar structure that accommodates a flexible bag and can be sealed. The bag extends out of the box, and its upper edge is stretched over the toilet seat. Once it has been used, the bag is collapsed by a vacuum generated by an appropriate device and the box is sealed.
The known waterless toilet demands a lot of effort on the part of the user to operate smoothly. The container must be inserted manually and connected to the vacuum line. The user must seal the box by hand once the bag has been collapsed and remove it from the toilet in order to get rid of it. When the toilet is employed in a public area there is no way to ensure that each user will carry out all the procedures necessary to leave the toilet in a proper state for the next user.
German Patent 468 100 discloses a waterless toilet with a seat and a vessel that can be sealed at the bottom with a flap. The vessel accommodates a sack of waterproof paper or a similar material. The drawback is that the sack must be extracted from the vessel by means of a hook on the lower flap that engages a cord on the bottom surface of the sack and dropped into an open container. The manipulations necessary to carry out this procedure are not appropriate for general use.
Another waterless toilet is known from German Patent 880 920. It has a container that accommodates a stack of lids for closing off the toilet bowl. Another device is employed to seal the used container with the lid. Also necessary, however, is a compression spring to force the lids up out of the container, and the lids must then be forced onto the container by a device that is manually operated and consists of many individual components.
Neither of these approaches can, due to their design and the drawbacks it entails, be employed for a user-friendly and hygienic toilet that involves individual receptacle bags or containers.